How to Get Rid Of and Prevent Moldy Siding

Your home’s exterior plays a huge role in curb appeal, home value and energy efficiency. Your home will experience an abundant amount of moisture throughout the year. Something homeowners often run into is moldy siding.

Nobody likes mold, especially on your home where everyone can see it. It’s important that you get rid of any mold as soon as possible because it can be harmful to your health and cause damages to your home.

Mold on siding isn’t an uncommon occurrence, but it’s an easily curable and preventable one. Below, we’ll go over everything you need to know about moldy siding and how you can get rid of and prevent it from coming back.

How Does Siding Get Moldy?

Mold doesn’t just appear out of nowhere – there are a few guidelines that trigger the growth of mold. However, these circumstances happen quite often and that’s why it may seem like mold does appear out of thin air.

The good thing is that mold doesn’t appear as frequently and won’t form as easily on your siding as it can inside your home. However, there are some very common causes of moldy siding that homeowners can face.

Oftentimes, homeowners find that mold grows on their siding where there’s shade covering the home or where sunlight is limited.

You might notice that the northern side of your home is where you experience the most mold/mildew build up on your siding. This is because the north side of any building gets the least amount of sunlight, therefore making it an easier target for mold to form.

Another cause of moldy siding can be from the material it’s made from. Wood siding can easily rot and create a welcoming environment for mold when exposed to moisture, so it’s not the best option for a lot of homeowners.

How to Get Rid of Mold On Siding

Luckily, if you have mold on your siding, it’s not the end of the world – at least not if you get it taken care of as soon as you can. Unless your whole house is covered with patches of mold, it’s usually a fairly easy process to remove it.

As with any other aspect of your home, cleaning is something you should make a routine for your siding. However, if you have wood siding with mold on it, it might get damaged and have to be replaced.

In order to remove mold from siding, all you need to do is perform a thorough cleaning. Depending on how much mold build-up there is, you can choose to hand-wash it or use a pressure washer. You can read a detailed guide on cleaning siding in this article.

You might also be wondering what to clean your siding with. A very common method is to use a mixture of 30% vinegar and 70% water, or you can use a quart of bleach for each gallon of water you use. We break down the best siding cleaners here.

In short, to remove mold from you siding, you should scrub the moldy area with your cleaning solution and let it soak for a few minutes before rinsing thoroughly. Depending on the severity of the mold, you may need to repeat the process until the area is free of mold.

Preventing Moldy Siding

After you’ve cleaned any mold from your siding or you want to stop it from forming in the first place, there are a couple of things you can do.

As we mentioned earlier, the material of your siding plays a big role in how well you can keep mold from forming on it. In order to maximize your efforts against mold, we suggest that your siding be made from energy efficient and durable vinyl.

Vinyl siding has developed over the years to become more than a flimsy plastic. In fact, it’s now one of the most popular home exteriors in the US. It’ll never rot when exposed to moisture which increases vinyl’s ability to fight against mold.

Another way you can help prevent moldy siding is to maintain your gutters and make sure they’re properly distributing water away from your home. Damaged and broken gutters will allow water to slide down and build up on your siding which directly contributes to mold forming.

It’s important to inspect your gutters and if you find anything wrong to repair or replace them as soon as possible.

If you have any duct work that vents outside of your home, you should inspect them every so often to make sure that there’s no moisture accumulating around them on your siding.

Also, you should routinely inspect your siding at least once per year so you catch any problems before they get out of hand, including mold.

Get Rid of Moldy Siding Once and For All

Using these tips and tricks, you can help prevent mold from forming on your siding and keep your home looking great.

If you find that your home’s current cladding just isn’t up to par, you can trust Feldco to replace it with the Midwest’s best vinyl siding. With our siding, your home will look better, be more energy efficient and also fight better against mold thanks to our superior backing system.

Start your new siding project today with a free quote online and join the over 350,000 homeowners who’ve counted on us for their home improvement projects.

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